On March 6, Ottawa will host a one-day, invite-only national antisemitism forum. The federal government will bring together police, prosecutors, politicians and Jewish leaders to discuss how all three levels of government can work together to ensure the safety of Jewish Canadians in their communities.
The last-minute timing of this forum has prompted some skepticism: it’s being held just three days before the federal Liberals elect a new leader and prime minister, and only weeks before the country likely enters a general election, which will put any political pledges at risk. That’s why advocacy groups, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, are demanding concrete action and real commitment.
So what will be discussed here? Will we see a federal version of the oft-debated “bubble legislation” seen in two Ontario municipalities? And why weren’t the federal Conservatives invited? To answer these questions and others, The CJN Daily host Ellin Bessner sits down with one of the forum’s panelists, Toronto-based criminal defence lawyer Mark Sandler, who’s also the founder and chair of the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors.
Ellin Bessner: You’re not only attending, but you are one of the panelists. Can you tell me why you wanted to participate in this and how that came about?
Mark Sandler: Well, we’re dealing with pervasive antisemitism, as you know, in the country. It has been my view and the view of many members of the community that law enforcement has not been as effective as they can be in addressing antisemitism, whether it’s on our campuses, on our streets, or in our institutions. So this is an opportunity for us to meet with governments from the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels, as well as law enforcement, and make the point as to the lack of effectiveness that we often see in addressing antisemitism, particularly from a public safety or law enforcement perspective, which is the focus of the conference next week.
Ellin Bessner: Who is on the guest list, can you say? Or if you don’t have the list, is it police, judges? Who’s coming?
Mark Sandler: I don’t have the list, but what I’ve been told is that they have sought to have representation from all three levels of government across the country, as well as law enforcement. There will be a significant contingent of community representatives. I know, for example, that the organization that I chair has not only been invited, but about 20 of our representatives will be attending in Ottawa.
Ellin Bessner: Okay. And the question that we have to ask, of course, is in the political sphere. You mentioned different levels of government. I know that the Progressive Conservatives, the opposition, were not invited, and I am not surprised because that was what happened in 2021. Does that make sense to you that this shouldn’t be an all-party concern and it’s just the government that’s about to maybe have an election like a week later or a month, like the end of the month?
Mark Sandler: Well, I can simply indicate my position, which is that I prefer to see a bipartisan approach to addressing these issues, which would mean representations not only from sitting governments, but also those who may be in a position in the future to form governments. So for me, I’m completely apolitical. I speak to members of all parties because I think we need allies everywhere we can find them. So I certainly support a multipartisan approach.
Ellin Bessner: Right. In December, when the government’s cabinet shuffle happened just before the holidays, you’ll remember the new cabinet minister, Rachel Bendayan, who was given the task to put this conference together and became Associate Public Safety Minister, said that this conference was going to come in February. Then when they announced it, it was March 6th. Is there anything we should read into this postponement or delay of the conference?
Mark Sandler: Well, I supported, as did some other community organizations, the delay, as I know the Special Envoy on Antisemitism did, because realistically, the February date really did not give time for the assembly of community groups, the assembly of government, and law enforcement representatives. We’ll still see. We will only learn on Thursday to what extent they’ve been successful, even with the new date. But I supported it for that reason and also for another reason, and that is that I’m looking for something more than aspirational statements at the end of this conference. I’m looking to see that law enforcement and different levels of government announce some deliverables immediately or contemplate a national antisemitism strategy that will be implemented within days or a few weeks of the completion of the conference. I think it was important that the government spend some time upfront, hopefully dialoguing with those governments and law enforcement to see what kinds of deliverables would be ready to announce at the conclusion of the conference.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so it was accepted by the people who, like you said, the stakeholders, as opposed to, they seemed scrambling. And then there was the Liberal leadership convention, which is three days later, and they just didn’t get it together. So it’s a positive thing, you’re hoping?
Mark Sandler: I think so. I know that there are people in the community that are concerned about whether anything can be accomplished with the upcoming leadership race in the Liberal Party and the uncertainty over what government will ultimately be formed federally. But for me, this is a networking opportunity. It’s an opportunity to develop deliverables and then hold candidates for federal office accountable as to the extent to which they’re prepared to act on those deliverables. The timing isn’t perfect in some ways, but in other ways, it may be very timely.
Ellin Bessner: All right. And also, if it’s a national strategy that involves three levels of government, this is what I’d like to tell us a bit about. You’ve trained police forces in hate crime knowledge, whatever, awareness in many cities at many levels in the last 16 months, right. And so it’s a municipal police force enforcing federal laws, and the provincial crowns are the ones that have to say yay or nay on most of these charges. So it’s really confusing for the average Jewish person who’s watching street protests and campus violence and firebombings of their kids’ schools, and they don’t actually care whose level it is; they just want it to go away.
Mark Sandler: Exactly. So the challenge here is identifying the right people to be speaking to about the right issues. The second issue that we have to identify is that just because jurisdiction is shared between the municipalities, the provinces, and the federal government does not mean you can’t have a coordinated, multi-level strategy to address hate. In other words, the RCMP is a federal police agency. Well, they are working in some of their integrated joint task forces with provincial prosecutors and with municipal designated officers to address anti-terrorism. You’ve seen recently some charges that have been laid by the INSET team that’s led by the RCMP. There’s no reason why you can’t have coordination between multiple jurisdictions in order to get the job right. Indeed, it’s absolutely essential to success here that we have that kind of coordination.
Ellin Bessner: Tell me a bit about some of the things you are going to say in your presentations. What do you want them to hear?
Mark Sandler: Well, I want them to hear, broadly speaking, two themes. The first is I want to identify the deficiencies that I see and others see in how law enforcement is currently taking place. Those deficiencies include, for example, a lack of knowledge by police officers as to the full range of criminal law tools that are available to them to address antisemitic activities. It includes knowledge on the part of prosecutors as to the existence of all of those measures. It includes an understanding of what antisemitism means in the contemporary field and especially the interaction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism because too few understand the contemporary form of antisemitism, as you know, is anti-Zionism. I need them to understand what the distinction is between truly protected speech and hate speech under our criminal code. We need better coordination between the anti-terrorism units and the hate crime units that exist right across the country. We need dedicated prosecutors, not merely prosecutors that dabble in the work, but also those who are specifically trained and whose job it is to address hate-motivated crimes across the country. So those are just some of the areas that I would emphasize. I would add another one that is very much multi-jurisdictional, and that is we see the Federal government in the last year has designated several organizations as terror entities, but we have to be confident that someone’s acting upon that designation. If you ask community members, they see, for example, Samidoun designated as a terror organization, but they know that charges were investigated against Charlotte Kates, its leader, starting over a year ago, but no action has been taken as of yet.
Ellin Bessner: And then we just saw them travel to Beirut to go to Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral service and boast about it on social media. It’s like, what? So it’s great to put some people on a list, but it’s just paperwork, but then you’ve got to act on the list.
Mark Sandler: You’ve got to ask yourself, are they continuing to engage in terror-related activities? What terror-related activities can be proven against the individuals who are part and parcel of these designated entities? Where are they getting their financing? Where have the funds gone that they’ve been given in the past? What role are foreign entities playing in funding hate fests that are taking place in this country or antisemitic activities on campuses? These are all of the issues that we need to be addressed through robust law enforcement that involves not only the police but CSIS, the CRA, and all of the agencies that should be working cooperatively and jointly to address these issues.
Ellin Bessner: This is the scary thing, the net is so leaky, and people seem to be able to come to Canada. We heard about this caliphate conference that was going to happen in Mississauga, then it wasn’t. Then it was in Brampton or Hamilton, I forget. And then it was canceled, then it was online. And speakers that have terror designations are allowed to come to campuses. The government seems to be letting these people in with visas, so it’s not law enforcement; it’s also Immigration and Border Services.
Mark Sandler: Exactly.
Ellin Bessner: But are they part of this conference too? Because we asked. Let me just go back to Samidoun and we’ll move on in a minute. We asked the Minister of the Public Security office right after the Charlotte Kates Samidoun designation, “Okay, when are you kicking them out? What’s happening?” Oh, that’s not our department. You have to talk to Immigration. So we contacted Immigration right away, and they’re like, “Well, we can’t comment.” This is ridiculous.
Mark Sandler: It’s part of the issue that I have identified, and I have spoken to government officials as well as police about the very concern that you’ve identified, which is if you speak to police, they will say, “Well, that’s being dealt with by CSIS.” CSIS obviously has to be circumspect in what they say. We know, for example, that I’ve provided information to the authorities that shows that after the designation took place, they changed their social media platform to continue to engage in their activities. So we need to know that law enforcement is on top of this and taking appropriate measures to deal with these activities. It’s taking place in the United States. The United States is showing a more robust interest in addressing these issues, and I’m hoping that we’ll hear a commitment to addressing these issues in new and effective ways when we meet next Thursday. So it is all, and I should add this, part and parcel of public safety as far as I’m concerned. Lawyers for Secure Immigration, one of our member groups, is going to be present. David Matis, who’s been very, very active, as you know, in speaking to these issues, is going to be present as well. So, we want these voices to be heard, and we want governments to act upon it.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so you were going through your list of what you want, your asks from government. Have you finished? Is there more that you can share?
Mark Sandler: So I do want to say that law enforcement has to be seen as only part of a larger strategy by governments to address antisemitism. For example, we may not be dealing with criminality in all of the antisemitic incidents that we see on university campuses. We need provincial governments to do more to address the failure of universities to implement their own policies to combat antisemitism on campus. That may be withholding funding to universities at the provincial and federal level until they actually give teeth to the policies that already exist. That may mean taking measures, for example, in Ontario to give directions through the Minister of Colleges and Universities on anti-racism policies at universities that do not promote racism as opposed to seek to eliminate it. So I’ve set out a series of recommendations for governments, but they’re not just confined to law enforcement because this has to be seen as part of a larger action plan to address the pervasive antisemitism we’re seeing.
Ellin Bessner: You wrote about how solicitors general always say they can’t direct the police to do anything, especially in a day-to-day operational manner, but they can set the tone. They can talk the talk. I was shocked to read that in Toronto, there is no policy on public protests, policing of public protests.
Mark Sandler: Right.
Ellin Bessner: Are there policies like this in other municipalities?
Mark Sandler: I have to say that the policies that exist on public order events, as they’re called, protests, demonstrations, and occupations, were highlighted for me. These policies were highlighted with Toronto as the best example because under Ontario legislation, such a policy is required. The Toronto Police Service Board announced some considerable time ago that it was developing such a policy.
Mark Sandler: I sent them a draft policy that I think would be effective, and they’re engaged in the consultation process. In my respectful view, we can’t be fiddling while Rome is burning; we need these kinds of policies in place now. The policies are simple. They provide for zero tolerance for antisemitic hate activity and set out a series of measures that should be considered by the police in the exercise of their authority in deciding how to deal with protests, demonstrations, and occupations.
Mark Sandler: Right now, what we are seeing in a number of jurisdictions is that police, with great respect, don’t understand the harm that’s caused by hate speech. The Supreme Court of Canada many years ago identified the harms of hate speech. Now, there tends to be more of an attitude that if nobody is beating somebody else up during a protest or demonstration, if we keep the pro-Hamas people separate from the pro-Israel people, then we’ve accomplished our task, we’ve de-escalated.
Mark Sandler: However, the harm is being caused when the hate speech is being spewed because it’s marginalizing our community. People don’t want to self-identify as Jews when they’re on campuses for fear of the implications. They’re afraid of walking the streets on days when protests are scheduled and the like. We need to see a new attitude led by a robust policy created by police service boards and reinforced by municipalities. Don’t tell me if you’re a municipality that you can do nothing about a hate conference that’s scheduled to take place in your jurisdiction.
Mark Sandler: It has nothing to do with freedom of expression; it has to do with hate speech and should be treated as such. You remember the anticipated rally that was to take place to martyr Sinwar after he passed away. We have to recognize these things for what they are and distinguish between someone who’s saying, “I’m criticising Israel’s policies, I’m criticizing its conduct of the war, I’m criticizing its government,” and people who are saying, uou know, “Death to all Zionists”, they’re not immunized from hate speech laws because they substitute Zionists for Jews.
Mark Sandler: When they preach in that way, when they say, “Sinwar, we have bullets for you,” when they say, “Not only from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” but they say, “From water to water, Palestine shall be Arab,” then we’re into the realm of hate speech as opposed to protected speech, and we’re not seeing action being taken to address hate speech.
Ellin Bessner: A couple of quick things in the Criminal Code, because that’s probably the problem area that gets a lot of attention. Many organizations have been calling for, and I think you are too, now, the glorification of terror symbols, flags, paraphernalia. You’re calling for that to be added to the Criminal Code, and it hasn’t been.
Mark Sandler: My answer is yes and no to this, and I’ll explain why because my position may be a little bit more nuanced than some, and that’s fine. I believe that there should be a section of the Criminal Code that criminalizes the possession of terrorist paraphernalia, unequivocal terrorist paraphernalia. These sections exist, for example, in England, and they’re perfectly constitutional, in my view. As for glorifying terrorism, I actually think that the existing tools we have in the Criminal Code are more than adequate to address 99% of the issues we are seeing. We have sections that involve incitement of terrorism, counselling terrorist activities, and the like. I think we have players who are demonstrably committing these offences on our streets and are not being addressed as such. My prime position is that we do have existing tools to address these things; now they’re just being underutilized.
Ellin Bessner: I read in your position paper that some of these laws, like section 319, and 318, literally need the personal stamp, the signature of the Attorney General in each case, which is why there might be a bottleneck in all this.
Mark Sandler: They need that personal consent for three of the four hate speech sections in the Criminal Code. They don’t need it for public incitement of hatred likely to lead to a breach of the peace. They don’t need it for the conventional sections that are available, such as intimidation that involves the blocking of roads or highways. They don’t need it for unlawful assembly. They don’t need it for interference with the lawful use and enjoyment of property. To the extent to which they do need it, we need to see a more expedited process for Attorneys General to make these decisions. Because we’ve seen in some of these cases they’ve dragged on for months and months and months without a decision one way or the other from the Attorney General’s office. That’s got to change.
Ellin Bessner: What makes the Jewish community feel so frustrated and abandoned is that it’s a hodgepodge of responses based on jurisdiction, based on province. And I remember this after October 2023, they charged a guy in Calgary with hate speech, and then they dropped the charges. They charged a guy or were going to charge a guy in Montreal, the imam, and then nothing happened. So, you know, what are people supposed to make of this? And this is the situation that you are sounding the alarm on: that this has got to stop?
Mark Sandler: Exactly right. And the one thing I would add is I also give credit when I see proactive steps being taken or effective steps being taken by police. We’ve seen, for example, some best practices by the Ottawa Police Service in the last six months. We’ve seen some best practices by the INSET unit led by the RCMP.
Ellin Bessner: Let’s just remind our listeners quickly what they prevented, a terror attack.
Mark Sandler: They prevented a terror attack on Irwin Kotler. A case was just completed where a Quebec man received a five-year imprisonment term for the willful promotion of hatred. It started as a weapons investigation.
Ellin Bessner: 3-D Weapons. We wrote about it, yeah, right.
Mark Sandler: It also led to their discovery that he was very active on antisemitic platforms, spewing hatred. We saw a man in Brantford convicted of willful promotion of hatred after a jury trial. So, we are seeing some law enforcement agencies acting effectively in dealing with the issue, but we need so much more, particularly from our municipal police services.
Ellin Bessner: Right. Well, we’ll be watching to see what happens, and we’ll be covering it. It’s been great to get this preview from you, and we’ll talk to you on the other side.
Mark Sandler: Thanks so much.
Show Notes
What we talked about:
- Learn more about the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism.
- Read more about what Jewish leaders are expecting from Ottawa’s Antisemitism Forum, in The CJN.
- Hear why Ottawa has been urged to convene a national summit focusing on law enforcement and antisemitism, in The CJN.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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